Ahem ahem... I am officially marriage material! I believe that with this past week, I have truly stepped up my candidacy as an excellent Indian bride.
On Tuesday, for the first time I prepared a full Indian dinner for my host family as per my host brothers' request (read: pressuring). It seemed like a good time to do it, even amidst my insane amount of tests and papers and presentations, as Friday was my host father's birthday and I wanted to do something special for him. He and my host mother were so tickled at the idea of the dinner that he went out and bought a magnum of champagne for the occassion (1.5 liters) and she couldn't stop taking pictures of all the food on the table. I made chicken curry, potato bhaji, cucumber raita and roti parathas. My host brother helped me out by making mango sorbet and chocolate cake for dessert. It was all quite a feast and I was exhausted by the end of it (especially since my hours in the kitchen followed a full day at school including an oral final and a 3-hour sociology final). I've made some dishes on their own before for me and my friends so I was able to make it all without having to stare at my grandmother's recipes, but the whole deal all together was totally new. I certainly have a new appreciation for my mom and my grandmother who I've seen slave away at enormous and complicated meals my entire life. I suppose they will have to be my next audience! I'll see if my host mom can send me the pictures she took for you all to see.
Since this past weekend our last full weekend, Hal and I tried to fit in some more special Paris things. All semester we've spent a lot of time in our neighborhood, Belleville, which has been great, but it's been nice to explore a bit more of the areas people really come to Paris to see. Saturday we saw the catacombs which were totally awesome, particularly after learning about them in my architecture class. A brief history for those unfamiliar with them: Paris has been a disgusting city for most of its existence, largely due to a lack of sewer system until relatively recently, and also because of the lack of space for the millions of Parisian tombs. In the 18th century, it was finally decided (after Parisians experienced milk curdling in their basement and bodies appearing in their homes due to cave ins) that the mass graves all over Paris would be transfered to one huge grave deep underground to improve sanitary conditions. Paris, in fact, has a huge underground system of streets with different layers thoughout. Really, there is a city beneath the city with streets paralleling the streets we walk on. In class, we learned how there are cataphiles- people who go underground here illegally and do things like paint graffiti, practice flame throwing and have dinner parties (bizarre, I know, but also kind of cool). So anyway, the catacombs are a legal way to see some of the underground, including mining areas and the mass graves. They're a little creepy at first, but after a while, the sheer number of bones you see is desensitizing.
An architect arranged the bones like this all throughout the underground passageways. They seem to go on forever.
Another very Parisian thing (though veryyy different thing) that we did this weekend was have dessert at Ladurée! I went with my mom when we were here a few years ago, but since Hal had never gone, I put it back on our to-do list. We had a delicious salted caramel puff pastry and a couple of their traditional macarons.
Tomorrow night my host family is all excited to show us Cyrano de Bergerac, which is a classic French play in entirely classical French... apparently the language is beautiful. We'll see what percentage of it I'm able to understand. Lots of tests this week and loose ends to wrap up. Just a few days left... more on that later.
Love,
Anj
